AIBU to see the government vote against assisted Dying, as preventing personal choice in how we might want to die?

I also think that Leadbeater was very out of her depth.

You can't expect parliament to vote through a bill "because it works in other countries" and ignore the fact that the MP who introduced the specific legislation proposed in the UK was not on top of the subject.

Firstly freedom and personal choice is a myth - freedom exists within boundaries and those bounds are around ensuring your freedom doesn’t affect other people adversely - or if it does affect others adversely that the balance between you and them isn’t skewed

you can’t exercise freedom of choice not to wear a seatbelt because of the impact on other people if you get killed or injured in a car accident - the other people involved, the emergency services and your family

some possible negative results over freedom to end your life include - not investing properly in looking after people who are disabled or in poor health, and in pressure being applied to those people to end their lives to avoid being a burden and free up inheritance . To me it appears that it has worked Ok in Switzerland and dreadfully in Canada so I can understand caution and making sure any law is very well written

I think we first should look at enforced saving of life - force feeding someone for example or pumping people full of drugs to extend life perhaps against their wishes.

Many assisted suicides are messy, painful and fail as well. There’s a significant complication rate with vomiting, re-awakening, taking many hours to die etc.

Internal pressure...in other words, their own decision making process. Someone is allowed to choose to make that 'sacrifice' . We all make choices balancing our own wishes and needs against those of others. Plenty of people, myself and my parents included, would sooner live less long than impose a crippling financial or caring role on someone else, particularly if that life was painful, limited and an endurance test.

In war, soldiers would throw themselves on grenades to shield others and they got medals. That was their free choice. Why is a rational person in a much calmer, more protracted process not deemed allowed to do the same?

It was a charter to kill old people, disabled people and people in abusive relationships.

I'm glad it didn't pass.

I agree but the bill that was just rejected would not have given you that right.
If you had dementia or a brain injury/stroke etc you would have been barred from assisted suicide.
Had the bill made living wills where the person sets out what they deem appropriate levels of permanent loss of memory or agency (rather than a temporary state that you could recover from) it would have been a better bill but it didn't and wasn't.
If you haven't read the bill or watched the committee meeting and HoL debates then I suggest you do as that bill was a shit show of a bill and never should have seen the light of day because it was so bad its put the cause of euthanasia back by decades

The legislation was horribly badly drafted and should never have been a Private Members Bill as it needed much more scrutiny.
The Bill lacked safeguards that worked and the Bill sponsors had to be shamed into taking evidence from the Royal Colleges, disability charities and elder abuse charities.
They had no adequate answer to scenarios like an anorexic starving themselves until they were within the 6 months to live window and then requesting assisted dying.

Assisted dying has fatal consequences if the protections don’t work so needs proper safeguards. It also needs credible well funded palliative care alternatives. There needs to be a real choice between managing end of life through palliative care or freely chosen AD. We are nowhere near that yet.

I would like to see a fully funded independent public Royal Commission or similar to take expert evidence on AD and produce recommendations on whether or not it can be done safely and appropriately in this country.

This is spot on.

Then you need to Google, assisted dying in Canada controversy and read. People are choosing death in other countries because there isn't adequate housing, healthcare or welfare benefits. Parents have been persuaded to carry on with pregnancies because they can choose to end their child's life into toddler hood. The criteria us getting bigger and bigger. We have a reform government on the horizon who wants out of the HRA (as does the Tory party) we won't have the right to life, built into our policy making. The first thing reform does is cut services and funding to vulnerable people, even if the council isn't funding it. We have a massive housing crisis and people are going into hardship, just like in the 1980s when single mothers were told that their poverty us thrir fault because they could of aborted, we'll have disabled people and parents being told they have other options. As a pp said, you can make a living will for a DNR and DNI. I have a relative under both and a friend opted for both.

As someone who worked in the veterinary industry for a very long time, euthanasia by lethal overdose is absolutely the best death you could hope for. Painless, quick and peaceful, just like going under anaesthetic.
I had to watch my mum die recently, it took 4 days, it was brutal, for us anyway.
In the veterinary profession if you left an animal to die slowly in a kennel for 4 days you would be prosecuted.
However I can also see the problems with the legislation.
The best thing any of us can do is have a living will/advanced directive or whatever it is called in various parts of the UK.
You can specify exactly what interventions you don't want in specific circumstances. Everyone over the age of 18 (16 in Scotland), can write one.
I do think we have an obsession with extending life even if that life is of very poor quality.

Apologies for the use of AS in my post. I couldn’t remember Assisted Dying as I’m a bit unwell today.

Because some people will feel pressured either internally or by family to take that course of action to save money or care home fees. Or they might feel they have to go for AS because they are being a physical or psychological burden on their family, not because they want to die but because they think it is what they are expected to do.

I have no issue with people making a choice for themselves but it has to be a choice, not coercion or guilt or internal pressure. I don’t think the bill has enough safeguards.

I am not against AS but I would like to see good palliative care available to all and a bill that is watertight against both abuse and pressure.

You don’t know everyone’s story. I am anti MAID. I watched my mother slowly die. Very slowly

My bedbound mother had a horrible final year, largely because of NHS mismanagement. She was terrified when we weren’t around of what they would do. I am left in no doubt had AD been an option she would’ve been coerced into it. There were other elements they did attempt to coerce her towards that weren’t in her interest and had she not had a highly interventionist family would have gone that route.

I’m all for freedom of choice if I thought this could be sensibly implemented. But given we have plenty of corrupt and useless staff in caring professions - doctors and nurses as well as management - this is the right action.

Some wealthy people and some poor people have miserable deaths. Money can’t save you from pain. But most of both types have relatively peaceful deaths - and therein lies one of the big lies the AD debate hinged upon

My mother inlaw said that if she was dying she wanted me to help her die, it didn’t come to that in the end

and a friends father wanted to go to Switzerland but he was too ill to travel and everytime she went to see him he just begged her to take him

some people do have the most awful ends to their lives

@likelysuspect I don’t think anything is horrific in Canada. Many people do get what they want.

We hear that palliative care needs to improve. In your dreams. It should be a personal choice in personal circumstances. We always have the tail wagging the dog. The bulk of us are ignored.

Nobody wants anyone to have a bad and painful death alone

(with the exception of those who wish it could happen to certain criminals and others that would like it to happen to people who disagree with them)

everyone wants people to have a painless good death surrounded by people who care for them, voting down a bill or disagreeing with AD for any reason doesn’t mean that you don’t want that

as others have said it doesn’t look like this bill was going to lead to a good law, so it needs to be changed so it does so that the ‘fears’ some of the people who voted have expressed are allayed

A) I prefer to live in reality, that perfect world is not what the any health system any where in the world is ever going to be able to provide to everyone. It is definetly not the case in the NHS currently and won't even come close in my lifetime, I'd like to take a pragmatic approach to my living and dying.

B) even with all the palliative care in the world, I can think of diseases where I personally would take MAID over palliative care, MND and locked in syndrome for example, as the current system is with no MAID in the UK I am left with just my Advanced Decision to Refuse treatment which will mean I starve to death, suffocate or die of sepsis in these situations should I be so unfortunate, because I already have ADRT which will legal stop doctors using feeding tubes, ventilators and antibiotics once I am severely debilitated by these conditions. It shouldn't have to be this way.

@WestisBestt of course it is.

The biggest problem is I've never seen any one object to it whose actually sat and spent time with someone slowly dying.

Palliative care is not good enough even the best care still means someone is slowly dying.

Of course we should.be able to chose..

I should be able to say now in a legal document...if I become catatonic / demtina need personal care loo/feeding and don't recognise anyone please finish me off !!

Im not qualified its my opinion!!! Lol

This may not be the convincing argument you think.

Whenever this issue gets debated, far too often a highly complicated and nuanced issue results in insults and gross over simplifications. There are clear examples that people can give where AD is a good thing, and clear examples where AD is a bad thing, and a lot of examples that are in grey areas. The question is, would the proposed legislation include the good examples and exclude the bad ones, and deal as well as possible with the grey area ones. If not, then rejecting it was the right thing to do.

I'm glad it hasn't gone through if women's rights are anything to go by.
What starts off as a good idea soon snowballs and before long men have women's rights and you need a supreme court to tell you what a woman is and we are still not following the rules.

Could you imagine what this bill would turn into if allowed to go ahead.